


Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

by kayura_sanada



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: (only spoken of abstractly but still), Battle, Difficult Decisions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Near Death Experiences, Post-Game(s), Presumed Dead, Ruminations, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29359224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: After long months of searching, Shen has finally found the drug Hancock used to turn himself into a ghoul. Yet every time he thinks about taking it, he hesitates. Is this what he wants? Is it what Hancock would want? Before he can have the conversation with Hancock, however, it’s taken out of his hands.
Relationships: John Hancock/Male Sole Survivor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! 💞💞

He sat in his workshop, his fingers tracing over the metal cylinder he’d acquired over the course of their long and varied escapades. It looked slightly rusted, as if it had once been something else. It _had_ been used for something else. Repurposed rather than recreated. A medical decanter, once. Technically still. If he opened it now, he knew the rads would start ticking up. Alerting his lover, who could practically sniff rads out.

He sighed, sat back, and leaned his head back so far his windpipe felt closed off.

He couldn’t dither over this forever. He wasn’t getting any younger. And dithering might show Hancock he didn’t want it, which would bury the deal before it even got off the ground.

The question was… _did_ he want it?

Hancock had joked about it once, long before they’d ever become an item. That he should consider going ghoul and making their treks around the Commonwealth ‘long-term.’ It wasn’t until they got closer, until they’d become so much an item that people expected one to show up with the other everywhere they went, that he realized he wanted this to be more than a few decades.

Shen wasn’t an idiot. Pragmatism was needed for… for _everything_. Yes, he loved Hancock. But that could change in five years, let alone five hundred. He had to have other reasons to want to live so long. To _want_ to do this to himself. And considering how much Hancock regretted all of his decisions that had led him to where he was before he’d met Shen, the last thing Shen needed to do was use this drug to _run away_.

Run away from the fact that he’d murdered his own son. That he’d failed to protect anyone. That he’d found himself on the wrong side of time, forced into a world where all he could do, forever, was keep fighting.

He rubbed his free hand over his face. Not that he disliked it. He had come to acknowledge that he didn’t hate the battles, the strategies. The _war_. He may have returned to Nora after his time on the battlefield, but he hadn’t stopped searching for a cause. He’d found one here.

The Institute had taken his son and killed his wife. He’d gotten his revenge for all that. But it hadn’t ended anything for him. Instead he’d been left trapped in limbo. What to fight for? What to _live_ for? He had no more ties to his time, but that merely meant he needed to create ties with _this_ one.

And he had, he thought, sitting straight again to stare at the cylinder in his grip. He had.

But basing all of this on his feelings for Hancock was a _mistake_. He needed to make sure he wanted this for his own sake, not just Hancock’s.

He wanted to see the Minutemen thrive. He truly believed in their cause. Helping others. Creating an interconnecting community. Places where people could live in peace and grow. This world was a nightmare now, but that was mostly because people insisted on anarchy and corruption. Those had both existed in his time, too. The only reason they hadn’t come to power, the only reason they’d kept a strong community that had known peace (until the end of everything, of course), had been because they’d trained up law enforcement and military. Because they’d created a unified government. As Hancock would say, by the people, for the people.

The Institute had been obsessed with their ideals of the past. Obsessed with purity, to the point where they’d stolen a baby from his mother’s arms in order to attempt to purge the last two hundred years from the very genetics of those around them. They called everyone above the ground dirty. They despised any and all marginalized groups. They culled any they considered lesser – which was _everyone who wasn’t them._

That was not the government this world needed. The Minutemen… they _could_ be.

He wanted to defend that. He wanted to see it bloom. He wanted to keep traveling, helping people, stopping those who would harm others or use the vulnerable time period to their advantage. For the next decade or so, he might be able to do so as a human.

But if he was a ghoul, he could do it for centuries.

He closed his eyes, bent his head until it touched the cool surface of the cylinder in his grip. His entire life was about fighting now. He couldn’t say he would be all right with it if he lost those he cared about in this time period. Preston would not live forever. Neither would Piper or Cait or Deacon. Nick, maybe. At least for a while. Until his body broke down. Same for Codsworth and Curie. He would have _someone_ , at least for a little while.

But Hancock?

Friends came and went. If he drifted apart from the others, it would be painful, but. Well. He didn’t travel everywhere with them. Maybe a few times, whenever Hancock was injured or needed some rest, or wanted to check on his people in Goodneighbor. But mostly, it was Hancock he traveled with. Hancock he bunkered down with. Hancock he slept with, curled around his body, breathing in the smell of cigarettes and sweat.

He couldn’t pretend Hancock had nothing to do with his decision. He wouldn’t have even thought of making this drug if Hancock hadn’t spoken of it. He wouldn’t have thought to take blood samples of Eddie Winter – and Hancock, once, though he’d lied and said it was to check Hancock’s blood-alcohol level, afraid to give Hancock hope when he was just starting his research. He’d spoken with ghoul after ghoul, tracking down colonists and friends and even taking samples from some ferals while on a trip with Cait. He’d spent months testing each in various medical centers around the Commonwealth, testing his stealth against Hancock’s trust far too many times for him to feel good about it.

He couldn’t pretend he’d done all of this for simply himself. Or perhaps he had? Perhaps his selfishness was all he’d taken into account, or else he wouldn’t have hidden it from Hancock all the way to this point. But if it was pure selfishness, then it at least was not just for himself. He wanted to be with Hancock. He wanted that ‘long-term.’ He wanted to travel with Hancock for years. Decades. Centuries. He didn’t know if he would always feel like this. If he didn’t, he would still have his work. His goals.

He gazed at the container in front of his eyes. In the end, he’d gone so far not because he wanted to live for so long or because he wanted to create a system of government. He did it because he wanted to know Hancock would not have to watch him age and die while Hancock stayed alive. He didn’t want Hancock to regret taking that drug.

He wanted to stay with Hancock. For as long as he possibly could.

But would Hancock accept that? Would he accept how long Shen had hidden this? Would he want to hear Shen had worked so hard to achieve this chance for them? Would he be furious? Horrified? Would he _want_ to be with Shen for so long? Was the impermanence perhaps even part of the appeal?

“Hey, lover.”

Shen froze, his hand squeezing around the container. Then he took a deep breath, lowered the canister, and turned. He smiled over at Hancock as he stepped inside. “Hey, gorgeous.”

As usual, Hancock’s nasal passages scrunched slightly as he took in the nickname. This time, however, his lover ignored it to wrap his arms around Shen’s shoulders and straddle his lap. “Finished playing mad scientist?” Hancock nodded at the canister.

“Yeah. For now,” he said. Now would be the perfect time to segue into what he’d just finished creating. A perfect time for that difficult conversation. He usually told Hancock at least the basics of what he’d done or what he’d made or what Hancock could expect it to do. Depending on their mood or the time of day, Hancock would usually offer either a test run or some private congratulations on a job well done. It would be stranger if he _didn’t_ talk about it. He opened his mouth. “Have fun with Dogmeat? I heard the turrets go off a bit ago. I’m sorry I couldn’t come down to help.”

“Barely had any of them left with that arsenal you’ve built here.” Hancock shuffled a bit in his lap. “I only got one. Beat Dogmeat to it, though. He looked pissed.”

“I’ll have to take him out soon, let him stretch his jaws.” He pushed the canister further to the side, too far away to be hit by a stray elbow, and wrapped his hands around the cheeks of Hancock’s ass. He looked up into Hancock’s wrinkled face and felt his heart twist. He couldn’t keep lying. He had to come clean. “Unless there’s somewhere you’d like to go?”

Hancock smirked. “Oh, I can think of a place.” Hancock yanked Shen forward into a kiss. Shen bit at the wrinkled skin around Hancock’s mouth, slid his tongue inside, and fought a completely different kind of battle. Hancock grunted in appreciation.

He had to tell the truth. Just… not now. Not yet.

One night. One more night, and then he would face the conversation ahead. He tugged on Hancock’s armor, loosening the bracers and greaves he’d made himself. Hancock, for his part, pushed Shen back until there was enough space between them for Hancock to slide his fingers down the front of Shen’s pants. He groaned. Any and all thought of conversation fled his mind.

* * *

That morning should have been the time he spoke with Hancock about what he’d made. And would have been, if another raid of bandits hadn’t woken them up just before dawn. After hurrying out to help the turrets take down the pile of dumb bastards, searching their corpses pulled up a piece of paper ordering the bandits to hunt them down. Apparently, someone hadn’t been thrilled with Shen raiding every medical building in the Commonwealth. The people who hired the bandits wanted to make sure he never went to raid _them_.

“Well, well,” Hancock said, crushing the paper in his fist and sending a dark smile toward Shen. “Sounds like we’ve been invited to a party.”

They followed the trail southeast, passing Diamond City before they found the little mom and pop drug clinic in the middle of what had once been the beginning of Massachusetts' suburbia. “I wouldn’t have even bothered with this place,” Shen murmured, looking on the single story building, little more than a convenience store, its old sign hanging vertically just above its front door. He wouldn’t have bothered with this place unless he was desperate; he had no need for over-the-counter drugs, and these places couldn’t offer him the tools or the information he would have needed to properly synthesize any drug, let alone a radioactive one.

Not to mention it was tiny and decrepit, almost certainly threadbare.

Of course, that was what he would have assumed. The fact that someone was willing to pay – and able to pay – to make sure he never came meant there was something here.

Hancock came up beside him, placed one hand on Shen’s shoulder, and squeezed.“That just makes it even funnier,” he said. Shen grinned.

“True.” If they hadn’t attacked Shen, he likely would have never come up against them. Their ego was responsible for this.

Gun in hand, he opened the front door.

He expected gunfire. He expected people who had seen him approach and had prepared for his entrance. Instead he found nothing but a destroyed storefront. Shelves lay on the floor or leaned precariously against one another. As he’d suspected before he’d even entered, the few shelves that had survived Armageddon had long since been picked bare.

Hancock moved over to the counter, leaning over shotgun first to catch anyone who might have been hiding. Shen hurried to the door leading to the back rooms. When Hancock leaned back up and turned to him with a shake of his head, Shen reached out and opened the door.

Someone shouted. A single pock of a gun echoed, and then several more, until the doorway was momentarily awash with bullets. Shen hugged the wall as Hancock came to stand beside him. “Amateurs,” Hancock grunted. It got Shen grinning again.

“Take them seriously until they’re dead,” he said, and ducked down. One quick look through the doorway showed him two men cowering behind a door on the right – likely the manager’s old room – and another man standing behind a single, likely empty, box. He waited for box man to show himself before plastering one right between his eyes.

With him gone, Hancock took over, hurrying past him through the doorway to spin to the right and catch both remaining men unaware. One shotgun blast, and then Hancock was calling to him. “Hey! Got something right up your alley over here.”

Thinking it to be a terminal or a lock, Shen took his time coming closer, scanning the space. Behind the manager’s room was the packaging space, barely large enough for its needs. A small, worn down table spoke either of the employees’ old break space or of the raiders’ desire for a gambling table. Save for the table, a couple of chairs, and the box, however, the rest of the space was bare.

He finally turned to Hancock and stepped inside the manager’s office, only to shove him back outside the room. “Shit,” he said, eloquently. Hancock yanked him back out by his outstretched arm, as well, responding to Shen’s fear.

“What is it?”

A chemistry table had taken over every spare corner of the manager’s old room. Only a warped desk and an old terminal remained beside the long line of countertop. Every available surface was piled high with beakers, at least eighty percent of them full, and the carcasses of what looked to be mostly stingwings. He shivered. He’d never liked bees.

After a few moments, he was able to name most of what he saw. The liquid in the beakers and tubes were, though purplish, _not_ the poison he’d originally assumed. He wrinkled his nose. They smelled like tarberries. He stiffened. “Could it be?” he murmured, coming closer. He leaned down to inspect the countertop a bit closer. The metallic countertop looked a bit warped in places. He carefully touched the warping. No. Not warped. This was melted metal on metal. He frowned. A small burner was his answer.

He straightened, turning toward the terminal, almost certain now of what he was seeing. All that remained was finding out _why._

A loud grinding noise whirred to life outside the room. “Looks like we have company. Save the search for later!” Hancock shouted just as gunfire tore up the hall. Shen abandoned the terminal to check on Hancock. Hancock backed up out of sight, likely taking shelter back in the entrance from the storefront.

Shen slid to the doorway as the bullets tapered off. He was about to jump out when he heard a voice. “Come on back, boys!” he shouted. “I was just wonderin’ who I should use this on!”

Shen’s teeth gritted. It was a weapon he didn’t use often, but he knew without a doubt what this man had in his hand, even though he couldn’t see it. He dared glance out then, taking shots at whatever he saw moving. He got a man in the chest, then as the bastard doubled over from the blow, took the headshot. He ducked back in as bullets went wild once more.

“Hancock! The gunmen are idiots, but their leader isn’t.”

“Well, the first part of that is obvious.” Within the thunder of gunfire, Shen clearly heard the snick of an empty cartridge. He slipped out from around the door, Hancock’s footsteps following him, and hurried down the short hall to the open back room. The guy fiddling with his magazine went down first, courtesy of Shen’s pistol. He moved out of Hancock’s way in the next second, hugging the wall by the hallway as Hancock took down two more men dithering over who to shoot. Shen took a quick look around. Two men still in the building, two more – one of them dressed in a lab coat, likely the one who’d catcalled earlier – slipping out the bay door.

“I got him!” he shouted, and hurried after the two trying to escape. A couple of bullets pinged off his chestplate before another shotgun blast silenced them.

He hurried outside. Behind the building sat only a small wedge of cracked concrete before the back of the next building blunted its growth. A couple of skeletons littered this space, pressed back against a dumpster likely long-emptied by vermin and raider alike. Another sat on the other side of the concrete space, bent a bit beneath the force of something. The leader and his lackey were making their way to the back door of the opposite building. Shen shot at the back door, pinging a warning shot that froze both men in their tracks. The leader recovered quicker, diving behind the dumpster. One quick shot took his ally down before he could do more than turn around.

Shen ducked against the side of the other dumpster, hugging the shadows as the leader held his own weapon out before him, the nozzle long enough to see but not the man’s hand. “I knew you would be trouble,” he said, the words practically spat upon the ground. “Should have known better than to trust those boys to take care of you.”

His boys? Well, that explained why there were so few here now. “Joke’s on you. I’d already finished my business before you sent them after me. I’m just here for clean up.”

The man actually chuckled. “No. The joke is on _you_.” The door to the building by which the leader hid opened. Bandits swarmed out. Shen shot the first to exit, then the second, before he found himself under fire from more men than he could count. He covered his head with his arm and let the bullets ricochet off his bracers. He gritted his teeth as each shot rang up and down his arm, chest, and leg.

With one hand, he shot. He didn’t bother with aim at first; there were enough men lining the back of the building that he couldn’t possibly miss.

He heard a few shots from inside the walls of the drug store, and then Hancock came running out through the bay doors. For a second, the gunfire stopped. The bandits hesitated, their focus divided between the two of them. Shen activated VATS and shot down two, then three men before they could fire a single shot on his lover. Hancock used the time to run up to the men still standing in the open and shoot them down. The rest dove for cover around the dumpster, huddling around a mass grave. Shen pulled out a grenade, slid out from the shadows, and slipped one finger into the pin.

“Oh, no!” the scientist said, “I don’t think so!”

Shen raised his gun arm again with a curse, but it was too late. He was too slow to stop the scientist from pulling the trigger on his rifle. The needle embed itself into his side, just between the two armor plates. He felt the long, thin point stab into his skin. He dropped the grenade, pin still safe, and yanked the needle out, but the syringe had already emptied.

A Syringer. The man had been working on a Lock Joints syringe, going by the stingwings, tarberries, and melted steel. He opened his mouth to warn Hancock when his jaw locked up. His arms and legs stopped moving. For a split second, his body wobbled, caught in place, before his own kinetic energy tipped him to his side. He fell to the ground with a thud right next to his own grenade. The syringe snapped into pieces, the sound of broken glass crunching beneath his body armor.

Ten seconds. Ten seconds, during which he would be unable to move.

“ _Shen!”_

He should have just told Hancock what they’d been making in the manager’s office, no matter that they’d been interrupted. He never would have imagined hearing such a sound from Hancock’s lips.

Worse was the laughter. The leader cackled at Hancock’s fear. “Serves you right!” More gunfire, so loud he couldn’t hear the rest of the man’s soliloquy. Hancock snarled, sounding nearly feral. His gun blasts never wavered. Shen could hear him walking up to the dumpster as if bullets weren’t flying through the air. After a few more moments, they weren’t. The leader stopped monologuing after a short scuffle.

Ten seconds had passed. Instead of being able to move, however, Shen found his body relaxing, every muscle going limp, before suddenly stiffening again, this time so strongly his eyelids snapped open. Sunlight seared into his retinas. His chest froze. His lungs struggled to inhale as his muscles locked. Then they, too, stilled. His heartbeat slowed.

“Be happy I don’t have time for you,” he heard Hancock snarl. The leader started to say something, only for it to cut off into a gurgle. Then silence. Something crumpled to the ground. “Shen.” In the sudden silence, Shen easily heard the breath Hancock sucked in. “No.” Footsteps. They pounded up to his side. The crunch of shoes on concrete changed to the sound of metal as Hancock knelt, his greaves banging against the stone. “Shen.” Fingers traced his brow, trembled above his eyes. Hancock entered his vision, shading him from the sun. No matter how hard he tried, Shen could not focus on him. “No, baby. No, no, no.”

That hand slid beneath his neck. His muscles should have been locked, should have fought the new position. They didn’t. Instead his head lolled onto Hancock’s arm, sliding to the side until his gaze moved to Hancock’s shoulder. Hancock’s other hand wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer. Fingers tightened on his hip and the side of his jaw, turning his head once more to Hancock’s face. His heart gave one slow, painful thump at the sight of Hancock’s scrunched features, the grimace pulling his melted lips back, the pinched look to his eyes. If his tear ducts hadn’t been scorched by radiation, he would have been crying. “Come on, handsome. Don’t,” his voice cracked, “don’t do this to me.”

His breaths came in shallowly, leaving him wanting to gasp, to fight for more. Instead he barely exhaled, as quiet as the silence around them. He had to fight to inhale again. He could feel each tiny pressure of his heart as it struggled to beat.

The chemical wasn’t wearing off. Not to mention it was far stronger than any Lock Joints syringe he’d ever made. The leader had said he’d wanted to test it on someone. Foolishly, Shen had assumed that meant the man hadn’t ever made the syringe before and wanted to see how it might work. He hadn’t thought the man had been improving upon the recipe.

A primal sound ripped from the back of Hancock’s throat, tearing Shen’s thoughts away. Hancock bent low, pulling Shen up to cradle him to his chest. His breath hitched. “I knew it. I knew it.”

Hancock’s entire body trembled against him. It was even harder now to get breath, stuffed into Hancock’s chest like this.

Hancock didn’t say anything for a long, long time. Shen struggled, pushing himself to breathe, to _live_. He tried again to move his arms and failed. His chest hurt. His eyes stung; he could not blink, and the dust was starting to irritate. Hancock held him so tightly it hurt. Abruptly, however, he stopped and pushed Shen away, back onto the ground. The sunlight glared back into his eyes again.

Hancock’s jaw trembled as he pushed a stray lock of hair from Shen’s forehead. “We had some fun, huh?” His voice broke, and he grimaced again, trying to get himself under control. “It’s been…”

He was trying to say goodbye. Shen fought harder. His heart was still slow, so slow his body was beginning to shut down. He needed – he needed… something. He couldn’t focus enough to know what. Lightning? No. Too out of control. Not like Hancock could do it, anyway. He loved the man, but engineering wasn’t his strong suit.

Hancock’s breath hitched again. His fingers wrapped around Shen’s cheeks until their foreheads touched. “I knew I would pay the price for all of this,” he said, his voice breathy and wet with the tears he couldn’t shed. “But I thought – I’d hoped for more time. A year. A decade. The rest of your life.” A horrible, broken sound rumbled through that scratchy throat. “Not this soon. Not yet.”

His eyes _hurt_. Fire burned inside them. Inside his chest. He didn’t want to see this. He didn’t want to hear this.

“Please, lover. Not yet.”

God. Why had he hesitated? Why had he let things get to this point? ‘Pay the price?’ Was that how Hancock viewed their time together? Something to be punished for later on?

He didn’t want that. He didn’t want their love to torment Hancock. He didn’t want Hancock to fall to his drugs again or live his life remembering their past in the Memory Den or shoulder their time together like some insurmountable weight. He didn’t want to leave Hancock alone. He wanted to stay. He wanted to live. With Hancock. In whatever form it took to make that happen.

Hancock turned away, his gaze flitting to the side – searching for something? It didn’t matter. In the next second, that gaze returned to his face. He looked back at Shen with wide eyes. One shaking thumb rubbed at the corner of Shen’s eye. It came back glistening. Wet. “Shen?” A single second of hesitation, and then Hancock was all motion, placing his hand over Shen’s chest and a finger beneath his nose. Shen exhaled. Hancock gave a short sound of exclamation, and then he was grinning wide. “You’re alive! Thank fucking _fuck_.” One hand immediately covered Shen’s eyes like a visor as Hancock leaned down close. “I…” his smile faltered. “I can barely feel your heartbeat,” he said, his voice quieting. He paled. “Whatever that guy did to you isn’t over, is it? You’re fighting it. God, keep fighting, baby. I’m right here.”

He knew. He knew that. And he knew what he needed. A shock. Something to jumpstart his heart. But there was nothing like that here, and he was no nurse. He didn’t know how to go about doing that, even if he _could_ move. He tried to think of the closest approximation, but his mind felt fuzzy. Systems, he remembered. His systems – organs – were shutting down. Too few heartbeats. Too little oxygen.

Just as he wheezed in a tiny breath, however, he felt Hancock moving him again. Laying him flat on the rough ground, Hancock tilted his head back and pulled open his mouth. Without a word, Hancock kissed him. No. _Breathed_ for him. The air pushed into his locked muscles, filling them to bursting. It _hurt_. Hancock pulled back, took a deep breath, and did it again. It hurt just as much as the first time, as if his lungs were a steel wall about to burst from too much pressure. But after the third breath, he thought he could feel the cotton around the edges of his mind shift back a little.

“Come on, baby. Live for me. Please.” Hancock breathed for him over and over again, until his breaths came in gasps. Slowly, the pain in his lungs decreased a bit. Shen felt his heart pick up its pace. The poison in the syringe was finally wearing off. Hancock still held one hand over Shen’s eyes, but the light he could see past those wrinkled fingers seemed different, somehow. Time had passed. A lot of it.

Hancock wheezed in a breath. “Come on. _Fuck_.” Another breath, almost hot on his tongue, and Shen twitched away from it. His eyelids blinked against the shift, his eyes feeling drier and grittier than he could ever recall. It hurt to move his lids, hurt worse to imagine not moving them. Tears poured down his face the instant the dirt and grit moved on his conjunctivae. For the first time in forever, he could swallow. His mouth felt cragged. He opened his lips and thought his skin might be cracking.

“Hancock,” he whispered, his voice too broken to actually speak, and heard his lover make an aborted, choked-off sound.

“Shen!”

His body hurt. Every muscle felt torn. His heart, once so slow and weak he’d barely felt it, kicked up slowly, then with such a vigor his chest felt ready to explode. He winced. Hancock sat him up, covering his eyes completely as he continued to cry. His throat clicked. It felt like dust had caked that, as well.

Hancock wrapped an arm around him and lifted him up, one hand digging through Shen’s pouch before holding a bottle of purified water out for him. Shen tried to lift his arms to take it, only to hiss and arc his back in pain. Hancock made a shushing noise before holding it to his lips. “I’ve got you.”

Shen drank, barely remembering to take it slow. When he was finished, he let his head fall back, too tired to hold it up anymore. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t. Don’t pull that self-hatred bullshit on me. You’re still alive. That’s all that matters.”

He smiled. His eyes still watered, tears cascading down his cheeks into his ears. Hancock saw his struggle and poured some of the water over his eyes before helping him sip again. “Yeah,” he said finally when Hancock pulled the bottle away. He swallowed a few more times, now that it no longer felt like rubbing sandpaper down his throat. “Burn it?”

“With pleasure,” Hancock growled. “Just let me get you clear.”

Despite his best efforts, Shen was useless. His limbs barely twitched, and when they did, it was with such agony he could only spasm and groan. Hancock had to drag him away from the drug store and its chem lab, leaving him propped up next to the corpses of the leader and his men. The leader’s throat had been slit – Hancock had chosen to use his knife on the man rather than his gun. A personal vendetta. It wasn’t the right time, and arguably not right morally at all, to feel a warm curl in his chest over the thought of that, but he did. One good thing about being with Hancock – those feelings were reciprocated and accepted, morally transgressive as they might have been.

He watched bleary-eyed as Hancock snatched the syringer from the leader’s limp hand and marched back to the chem lab. He returned moments later and stooped down where Shen had fallen. For a moment, Shen feared Hancock falling apart in the aftermath of what had almost happened, too far for Shen to console him. Instead, Hancock grabbed something – the grenade Shen had been about to throw – and hurled it into the building. Hancock raced back to him as the building exploded. The windows shattered. A moment later, fire burned bright through the windows.

Hancock bent back down beside him. “That’ll call every shithead in a ten-mile radius to this spot. We gotta go, lover.” His hands wrapped around Shen, already helping him up. Shen winced. His legs shook. When he tried to take a step, he managed little more than a swing of one leg before he crumpled. “Or we could stake out this building here,” Hancock improvised, nodding to the building in front of them. The one the leader’s small army had crawled out of.

“They’ll… search,” Shen said. But he didn’t tell Hancock to go. He knew better than to poke that bear.

“Probably,” Hancock grunted. He balanced Shen against his side and wrenched the door open. “But we ain’t gettin’ far at the moment, and it’ll give you more time to recover. Once we got you better, we’re good to go.”

Shen closed his eyes, letting Hancock lead. He breathed as deeply as he could and remembered his old field training. If paralyzed, try to wriggle one’s extremities. Bit by bit, little by little. Until one could move freely again.

He tried that as Hancock dragged his limp carcass up a single flight, high enough to give them advanced warning, but not so high they couldn’t take the windows for exits. There were cots lined all along the ruins of this building – an office building, if the desks shoved to the sides of each room were a clue. Hancock searched out the least grody one before finally lowering Shen down. Both groaned when Hancock let go, Shen as he instinctively tried to shift into a comfortable position and Hancock as he leaned back and cracked his spine. The instant he was done stretching, Hancock leaned back down and shifted Shen around until he could relax.

If he concentrated, he could wriggle his fingers and toes a bit without pain. It was difficult; the rest of his body _could_ move, and it did on instinct, reacting to movement with movement. It just. Always made him feel like he was moving with bullet wounds. Finally he gave up for a moment and let himself just _be._

“You all right?” Hancock asked after a few seconds, Shen cracked open an eye to see his lover crouching tensely above him, that dark gaze watching his chest. He winced.

“Yeah,” he said. His voice still sounded scratchy, even after the water. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Hancock looked away, his shoulders getting impossibly stiffer. “I’m fine.”

“The other way around… I wouldn’t be.”

It got Hancock turning to him again. His lover’s lip twitched as if trying to hide a smile. “Yeah. I know.”

Shen stared at the ceiling. It was an awkward time to bring it up. He could hear people arriving down below, looking around. Likely spotting the bodies. Would they think to check this building, or would they consider it too dangerous? He breathed in, finally getting a deep lungful for the first time since getting poisoned. He worked his fingers again. Still no pain, and now he thought his palms didn’t hurt as much, either. If this was no longer a problem of poison and instead one of plain muscle fatigue or cramping or tearing, then a single good stimpak would fix him right up. He moved to grab one, grunting at the pain as he did. As usual, Hancock seemed to understand him. He bent down and pulled one from Shen’s pack, then stabbed it into Shen’s arm. He shivered, surprised by how wary he suddenly was of the stimpak’s needle. “Won’t this have aftereffects? Isn’t that why you didn’t ask for one?”

“It could have, but I think the poison’s gone.” No one opened the door down below. Not yet. It meant the stimpak had plenty of time to course through his system. He breathed in again. Nice. A deep breath, and it didn’t even hurt.

“Time to get going, then,” Hancock said, and made to stand. Shen caught his wrist.

“Wait. I… have something I need to say.”

It wasn’t a good time. They were effectively surrounded, though the enemy didn’t yet even know they were near. Shen was still recovering, and Hancock… Hancock couldn’t be in a good place, emotionally. But if he kept putting it off…

He thought of Hancock’s face as he mourned Shen’s death. Remembered the way Hancock had cradled his body close, shaking from tears his body could no longer shed. Remembered Hancock’s words. _“I knew I would pay the price for all of this.”_ His lips firmed. He gripped Hancock tight enough to bruise even a ghoul’s skin. “It’s important.”

Hancock didn’t protest, even though he had to know it was bad timing. He just sat down next to Shen. More proof of how scared he’d been. “All right.”

“First.” His heart, now fully recovered, decided to make up for lost time and pounded hard and fast against his ribs. “I’m sorry for keeping this a secret.”

Hancock’s brows raised. “Is this about what happened today? Or,” he said, his tone changing abruptly as his brows scrunched down, “is this about how you’ve been hunting down any place with a stimpak collection recently?”

He should have known Hancock wasn’t stupid enough to think he was just clearing out the medical facilities of pests. What had Hancock thought he was doing? Gearing up for something big? “No. Yes.” He held up his hands as Hancock raised a brow. “Not what you’re thinking. I was targeting every possible medical building, yes. But not for stimpaks. And I also happened to hit some places that weren’t about medicine, but about super mutants, or ghouls, or… radiation. Like when I went back to talk with Virgil again.”

Hancock scrunched up his face again. “What does that have to do with anything, and why are you telling me this _now?”_

Hancock looked toward one of the windows as if to exacerbate the point that now was not the time. Shen grimaced. “Because I can’t let you think… because I’ve remade the drug.” Hancock’s face scrunched up some more, for about half a second. Then it went slack. His eyes widened. “The one you took,” he said, even though he didn’t think he had to. His voice lowered as someone downstairs opened the back door. “I can become a ghoul, too.”

Hancock didn’t move. From what Shen could see, he didn’t even breathe.

Shen touched his shoulder. “I thought about it. About doing this long-term. And I want to. With you.”

Hancock’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Closed again. He swallowed hard. “I…”

“I don’t intend to go anywhere, John.” He tried on a smile. “Not without you.”

A few men started talking down below. Shen pulled out his pistol without looking away from Hancock’s face. He still hadn’t moved. Shen dithered for a second, but finally moved to meet the people climbing the stairwell. The instant he did, however, Hancock surged forward. He ran ahead of him, heading down the stairs. A couple of men shouted in surprise. Shen cursed under his breath and followed.

He barely got to do anything. Hancock seemed bound and determined to need his own stimpak; he raced through the maw of encroaching raiders and shot his barrel nearly empty. Shen saw only one man still uninjured enough to try to fire back, and he entered VATS and shot the man before he could get the chance. Their gunfire alerted everyone else nearby, and their conversation was put on hold as they fought their way through. Another grenade did half the job for them, while Shen creating cover fire for Hancock’s reload did the rest. By the time they were done, the area looked like a miniature warzone, and Shen was sick and tired of the place. He returned to the road, ready to put this entire day behind him, when Hancock stepped in front of him. He opened his mouth to ask Hancock to move, but Hancock spoke first.

“Did you mean it?”

So they were going to have this conversation here, after all. Shen smiled. “I mean it.”

Hancock hesitated. “It’s not… I mean, the high? It’s not really a _high_ at all.”

“I figured.”

“It hurts. Bad. It’s a bad trip. And then you come out looking like this.” Hancock raised his hands, showing off his wrinkled fingers and palms and wrists. As if his face wasn’t a good enough hint. “It’s not fun. People don’t treat you right.”

“More to shoot, you mean?” Shen asked with a grin. He slid his pistol into its holster and crossed his arms, canting onto one hip. “I’ve argued pros and cons for months now, big guy. I’ve told myself there’s no guarantee you’ll live as long as me – that something like what almost happened today could happen to either of us at any time.” He gnawed on his lip, not wanting to think about that. Hancock’s face said the same. “I told myself there’s a danger in using this, since though Virgil and I have triple-checked our conclusions, we can never be sure until we actually test it. Which is a moral quandary in and of itself.”

“Should’ve let the bastard live,” Hancock growled, cutting in. “He could have been first in line.”

Shen quirked another grin at that. “Then there’s the actual change. I’m not vain, but I’ll admit that losing the hair earlier than expected stings more than a little.”

Hancock practically choked on his laughter, as if he hadn’t expected to hear it.

Shen dared grab those hands Hancock still had up and squeezed tight. Hancock looked down at their fingers as Shen slid his own between those wrinkled digits. “I’m not saying it’ll be perfect. I’m not even saying our lives together will be perfect. I expect a lot of fights, a lot of fury, and even a lot of boredom. I expect us to change. Maybe I’ll become the druggie and you’ll become the one fed up with the drugs.” Hancock raised a brow. “What? In a hundred years, who knows? But I know this.” He stepped closer, until their breaths mingled. Until Hancock’s face took up his whole view. “I intend to keep rebuilding this world, whether as a Minuteman or a renegade. And I intend, so long as you are willing, to do so with you at my side. Whether it’s for another week or another millennia. Whatever pulls me away from you, it’ll have to do so kicking and screaming.” He held their entwined hands up until they framed their heads. “Sound good?”

Hancock breathed. He inched his face closer, until his burned lips dragged over Shen’s. “Sounds fucking fantastic, sunshine.”

Shen grinned. Laughed. It gave Hancock the advantage at first, let the ghoul dip forward and crush their lips together, nipping his way inside until he could chase Shen’s laughter with his tongue. Shen was a fighter, though. He gave as good as he got. “I love you,” he said, yanking Hancock closer by his breastplate.

“If I hadn’t come down off the high hours ago, I’d think this was a hallucination.”

Shen’s grin turned manic. “Allow me to prove reality to you.”

Hancock grunted, wrapping his hands around Shen’s ass. “It would be my pleasure.”

It ended up taking a very long time for them to leave that drug store and its office building cohort. By the time they did, Shen didn’t hate the place nearly as much.


End file.
